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On December 8, 1981, Lloyd Bernard Free, a guard for the Golden State Warriors out of Canarsie High School in Brooklyn, legally changed his name to World B. Free. I bring this up because you’ll forget all about Ron Artest soon too.

“It was entirely possible that drugs that affected neurotransmitter levels could relieve symptoms even if neurotransmitters had nothing to do with the illness in the first place (and even possible that they relieved symptoms through some other mode of action entirely). As Carlat puts it, “By this same logic one could argue that the cause of all pain conditions is a deficiency of opiates, since narcotic pain medications activate opiate receptors in the brain.” Or similarly, one could argue that fevers are caused by too little aspirin.”—- The Epidemic of mental illness: Why?

“[Archbishop of New York] Dolan equated the move to allow same-sex marriage to life in China or North Korea, where “government presumes daily to ‘redefine’ rights, relationships, values and natural law.”

“Please, not here!,” Dolan wrote. “We cherish true freedom, not as the license to do whatever we want, but the liberty to do what we ought.”

Words are building blocks that signify certain discrete things, but that specificity is an illusion since it is also fluid as a stream and can become quite fungible when made into Argument. By themselves they are neutral, blameless, definable. Coming out of the mouths of the motivated though they can be harmful or even graver to my mind, obfuscate.

Apparently the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation supports research into Type 1 diabetes which is genetic, and not caused by, say, drinking a half-gallon of soda, with your bowl of sadness at KFC, but still. Come on.

If we’ve gotten to the point where we’re drinking a half-gallon of soda- which contains 56 teaspoons of sugar– then does it really matter if we cure Type 1 diabetes?

The best part of this interview with Mamet is this story about meeting the famous playwright:

“The first time I met Tennessee Williams,” he recalls, “he showed up at a party in Chicago with two beautiful young boys who were obviously rough trade. He looked at them and then he looked at me and he said, ‘Expensive habit.’ So that’s kind of how I feel about liberalism. It’s a damned expensive habit.”

But he also says things like this:

So who would he prefer as president? He replies that he is “not current” with the Republican contenders until I mention Sarah Palin. “I am crazy about her,” he answers immediately. “Would she make a good candidate for president? I don’t know but she seems to have succeeded at everything she put her hand to.”